Peter Savva, 64, outside the Appeal Court. The chartered surveyor has been battling to block his teacher wife from divorcing him, claiming she is too mentally unstable

A husband who says his wife must be mad to divorce him has vowed to continue his legal campaign to block her finally ending their marriage.

Chartered accountant, Peter Savva, 64, claims his wife of 34 years is too 'mentally unstable' to be permitted by the courts to break up their family.

But Niki Savva, 58, a biology teacher at a north London sixth form college, is 'fed up' with his claims that she lacked the 'mental capacity' to instruct divorce solicitors.

She filed for divorce last year and
was granted a decree nisi at Barnet County Court, bringing down the
curtain on her marriage to Mr Savva, which saw them raise two children.

'We are divorced as far as I'm concerned but he is not accepting it. He is in denial. I'm wary anything I say he could use against me,' Mrs Savva told the Evening Standard.

She added: 'I have been told not to say anything because he will take it and twist it and turn it against me.

'He is trying to make things difficult for me at work. I am very happy that it is all over but not from his point of view.'

Mr Savva, from Crouch End - who says
UK divorce laws do not do enough to encourage couples to stay together -
argued his wife took the decision to divorce him while she was 'angry'
and in the midst of a 'breakdown'.

And, despite failing to win the
backing of an Appeal Court judge for his fight to stay a married man, he
has vowed to continue his quest to have his wife assessed by a
psychiatrist and to prove that there is life left in their relationship.

Also campaigning for reform of divorce
laws, he says there should be a 'cooling off period' to prevent
marriages being broken in the heat of the moment by 'angry' spouses.

During the earlier divorce hearing,
Judge Markanza Cudby accepted Mrs Savva’s account that the marriage had
'irretrievably broken down' and that the couple had slept in separate
bedrooms for the last eight years.

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Mr Savva, however, insisted he and
his wife had only been in separate rooms for two years 'because of the
house being in a bit of a state, her needing her own space and having a
lot of work documents'.

He told the judge: 'I have not exhibited unreasonable behaviour... I accept my marriage has temporarily broken down, but it is not permanently broken down.

'My wife has suffered a breakdown... she must be ill otherwise she wouldn’t have said these things... she’s confused.'

Mr Savva told the judge: 'I accept my marriage has temporarily broken down, but it is not permanently broken down.'

Battling to have the decree nisi overturned before Lady Justice Black in the Appeal Court, Mr Savva told the judge: 'I’m doing my best to save my marriage.'

'Whilst my wife was angry and unhappy she issued divorce papers straight away...I consider that my wife lacks proper mental capacity to give instructions to her solicitors,' he went on.

'The demeanour and testimonies of the parties were treated as findings of fact in the absence of substantive evidence,' he said.

He argued that, before allowing the divorce to go through, Judge Cudby needed hard evidence of his wife’s mental state 'from a disinterested party, not a petitioner who may be angry at her husband or may lack sufficient mental capacity to undertake divorce proceedings'.

Mr Savva went on to call for changes in family law, saying that an abandoned rule, stipulating a one-year cooling off period to prevent marriages being ended in haste, ought to be reinstated.

'He considers that his wife has been unduly influenced by her solicitors, her mother and others.'

Lady Justice Black

'If that clause had not been removed... a lot of angry women would reconsider the future of their family and children before going on to consult solicitors,' he said.

'That is one of the reasons society is the way it is today. Uncorroborated and unsubstantiated, a decree nisi can be pronounced.'

In her judgement, endorsed by Lady Justice Black, Judge Cudby had said: 'This is a very sad case in some ways.

'The husband really cannot accept that the marriage which has been in existence for a long time has broken down.

'It is always sad when one party says the marriage has ended and the other does not. In these circumstances there are no winners.

'He felt part of the reason why he feels his wife is mentally ill is because she wants to divorce him and could not understand why that would be.

'The husband finds all of this very difficult... he struggles to accept that his marriage has come to an end... he does not want to believe that the time has come when these parties must go their separate ways... he struggles and reaches out for any excuse other than the truth.

'The wife struck me as a lady who was upright, honest and, not unsurprisingly frankly, fed up with all that has been going on.

'She did not come across to me as in any way psychiatrically unwell or in need of any assistance.'

Lady Justice Black said: 'He considers that his wife has been unduly influenced by her solicitors, her mother and others.

'He considers she is unwell and lacking in capacity and he can’t accept that she has brought this divorce petition for any reason other than that.

'The wife did not come across as in any way unwell or in need of psychiatric assistance. It was in fact the husband who was struggling to come to terms with the facts about the marriage.

'It was open to the judge to make the findings of fact she did about the husband’s behaviour and the wife’s mental state.

'The judge was entirely entitled to make the finding of irretrievable breakdown on the material before her. I therefore refuse the husband permission to appeal,' she concluded.

Mr Savva, outside court, said that his legal battle would not end here and that he was seeking a judicial review of the laws governing the process of divorce, 'not for my own sake but for the sake of others'.

'Once the process of divorce starts it is very difficult to stop. It is a shame that the system will destroy a marriage for a silly reason.

'Irretrievable breakdown is very subjective. One judge in court on one day can make a decision which can relate to half of somebody's life and will cause irreparable damage to the parties. It affects society,' he added.

He said Mrs Savva and their grown up children still have the former matrimonial home in Finchley. The financial side of the divorce has already been dealt with by consent, he added.

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Husband tells judge his wife should be denied divorce because she 'must be mad to leave me'